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The Search bar - Should take tags and info more into consideration

A topic by LabChurros created Feb 23, 2024 Views: 1,176 Replies: 8

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I've been checking out how easy it is for people to find my games on Itch and I was disappointed to find that the Search bar on Itch seems to put game titles and by-lines alone as the absolute top priority in the order it shows you games.

I know Itch has a tag-searching function under the Browse tab. But we all know the most common way for users to search content on sites is to use the standard, easily accessible, and always onscreen search bar.

Is this how people want discoverability on Itch to work?

Top results for Browsing for both the Multiplayer and Shooter tags.

Top results for writing "multiplayer shooter" on the Search for games and creators bar.

While looking for ways to better present my games on Itch I find it very disappointing that my only option for climbing search results seem to be foregoing giving a title to them altogether. It's something very disheartening for a creator. Therefore the option I am choosing is to come here and bitch about it :)

My suggestions

Take tags and other information such as meta-data and the Description more into consideration for the search result order.
Limit the results that show up due to the title alone to 6 results (first row) or even less.

I am aware of the use case of someone coming on itch to find the page of a game they know the name for already. Of course, that person should be able to find the game they are looking for with ease.

I am tagging this thread as a discussion because I want to see if other people agree before trying to submit a suggestion. What are your thoughts on this matter, do you have further suggestions?

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leafoAdmin299 days ago (3 edits)

The search bar is for discovering content by name. It will also suggest tags if you are trying to find content by a topic. If you are trying to find multiplayer shooter games then I recommend using the browse page for that: https://itch.io/games/genre-shooter/tag-multiplayer

But we all know the most common way for users to search content on sites is to use the standard, easily accessible, and always onscreen search bar.

Often when people post topics about search results it’s because they’re trying to optimize their game’s placement on the results page, and they may have a misconception of how games are discovered on our platform. My recommendation is to use accurate tags, and grow your page organically so it can be elevated in our discovery algorithm.

People finding content by topic will be using tags. The search autocomplete will push someone trying to type a topic name into the search bar to the respective tag name. There is likely very little discovery of content on the search results page for queries that use topic names, so trying to optimize your page for that result is likely a dead end.

Here’s some more information about how search currently works: https://itch.io/docs/creators/getting-indexed#limitations-of-search

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redonihunter298 days ago(+1)

People finding content by topic will be using tags.

Not when new to the platform. It could be made a little more clear for new users. Also, that there is a second search box. One can write in the tag box, even though it implies otherwise.

The search box says "Search for games or creators". Obviously, creators can't be searched for by their attributes, only by name. But searching for games is undefined. What does it mean? Search for games by title, topics, tags, descriptions or other criteria? Or rather, what will a new user think it means? Or what is the expectation a new user might have from a search box.

The tag box says "Select a tag" and presents a drop down box of tags that will match as suggestions when typing and act otherwise similar as those boxes that have a fixed set of items. Only, this is not so. One can write any tag freely and filter with it. It took me months to learn that by accident.

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LabChurros298 days ago (1 edit)

Often when people post topics about search results it’s because they’re trying to optimize their game’s placement on the results page

Of course, I am worried about my game showing up when people look for relevant keywords. I am quite happy with my tags, my humble little game is faring quite well for now on Browse. It was then that I decided to check how it shows up in search and found out a lot of people were tracking ahead because they did something like: Game Title (Tag Tag Tag) or just: Tag Tag Tag as the game title.

I am always looking for ways to give my games a better chance, but I do draw the line way sooner than a lot of people. Stuff like this makes me wonder if I am just the stupid naive one. I frankly don't want to keep considering naming a game around SEO terms, my alternative was starting this discussion.

The search autocomplete will push someone trying to type a topic name into the search bar to the respective tag name.

Not for tags below ~200 games. This also seems to be the reason some tags do not autocomplete anywhere on the site like redonihunter just pointed out. I get that there probably should be a bar that tags need to clear to show up, but maybe it should be lower.

To give an example, Itch hosts Toe II Toe, the most beautiful pixel art boxing game I've ever seen. Writing "boxing" on Search will never show it even if you scroll to the bottom, because it's not on the title and it's not on the short description/tagline(The author decided to use the term Slugfest to describe it in the tagline. Can't blame them, it's a fantastic term). "Boxing" will also not autocomplete either on Search or Browse.

The search bar is for discovering content by name.

This idea was reinforced by the link you provided. "Direct title search: Someone is looking for something specific and types in the name of the project". But from my testing, it's not only the title, it's also the short description/tagline, which leads more people into just filling that with tags and getting ahead in search results.

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redonihunter297 days ago

From my observation the search has two kinds of results. It does title matching. Then title matching by "relevance". Like boxing will also match box. But it does not match any game that has no "box" in the title.

Let's try fishing. That is also a tag. The new box will suggest fishing as a tag. Note, boxing was not suggested as a tag. It will suggest boring.

The search result will also display fishing as a tag and then all the games it deems currently relevant for fishing, and those are only titles with fish somewhere.

So why was the tag boxing not shown as a search result? Because it is not in the list of featured tags. Or suggested tags. Whatever you want to call them.

But from my testing, it's not only the title, it's also the short description/tagline

I believe that people think this, but can you give an example, where the title has not resemblance to a word, yet you can find it in search? Fishing and Boxing were both negative.

Spamming the title with seo terms is a problem. If I were to implement search algorithms, I would activly punish such titles's relevance, since they are obviously spreading out their relevance.

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LabChurros297 days ago(+1)

Like boxing will also match box. But it does not match any game that has no "box" in the title.

This is probably just search APIs auto-correcting and doing combined searches. This is a nice feature since boxing is also the gerund for the verb to box.

So why was the tag boxing not shown as a search result? Because it is not in the list of featured tags. Or suggested tags. Whatever you want to call them.

As I mentioned in my post from what I can test it's because tags used on a number below 200-300 games will not be autocompleted. "Boxing" has 165 games while "fishing" has 1,624 games. I am assuming that range as the cutting of point because the lowest tag to auto-complete I could figure out was "tennis" at 385 games.

I believe that people think this, but can you give an example, where the title has not resemblance to a word, yet you can find it in search? Fishing and Boxing were both negative.

Searching for "slugfest" will give you 4 games with slugfest on the title ahead of Toe II Toe and Super Slav Brothers. Those last two do not have the word "slugfest" in the title but do in the tagline and this ordering, title first, tagline later, seems to be by design.

I strongly believe that because my latest game is a stronger example of this. I am an NSFW dev and have been keeping all the info on this discussion SFW to avoid people giving me shit. But if you search for "giantess" (a common keyword for a kink) you will get first about 14 games that have the word in the title. Past that point, all the other games(about 24 more) do not feature the word in the title but do in the tagline. Btw, 3 games out of the 14 are doing the "Game title(Tag Tag Tag)" thing. Although one is not doing with the searched word but some other tags.

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redonihunter297 days ago

As I mentioned in my post from what I can test it's because tags used on a number below 200-300 games will not be autocompleted.

That has nothing to do with this. The list is arbitrary. It is neither the number of games having that tag, nor if the tag has a description. It is just a list that has tags in it and is managed by itch in whatever fashion they deem usefull.

There is of course a correlation. Popular tags tend to have a description and be on the list. The new autocompletion feature is built regularly with a digest of the popular games. I do not know how they include the tags in there, but I would assume it is the same mechanism that would give a tag as a search result.

You cannot search for any tags. To "find" the tag boxing, you have to type it in verbatim in the tag box.

Based on your finding with the short description, I assume the search might populate the results with titles that have relevance in the short description, if there are not enough other results. Or they would appear but are truncated due to not having title matches, and too little relevance. I would assume with fishing that there would be titles that have fishin in description, but not in title. But there are so many exact title matches and enough partial title matches, that description matches are drowned out.

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LabChurros297 days ago

Another thing I found out thanks to redonihunter further tests. Searching for "fishing" will display a header on the search page suggesting and linking people towards Browsing the tag for "fishing". It will not show up for boxing, because boxing seems to be considered a "low power tag".

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redonihunter297 days ago

They are sometimes called featured or suggested tags. I think suggested tags might be the "offical" name.

You will find non suggested tags with quite a lot of items. Uhem, nsfw has like 5000 items. The adult tag is better though, to use as a tag, since it is suggested and you can only have 10+1 tags.

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